March for Our Lives Events (659 so far) Map Link
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From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Notorious RBG in the Hizzouse
Here’s something to look forward to at the flickers this spring. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a fixture of the nation’s highest court for 25 years, stars in a new documentary. Here’s the trailer and, yes, you’ll see her doing her pushups...
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At the moment it’s the best-reviewed movie of the year, designated 100% Fresh at Rotten Tomatoes. It opens in select theaters May 4th. We should have a Daily Kos screening. That’d be cool. Where’s the nearest theater that holds 1.5 million people?
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold...[Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Monday, March 12, 2018
Note: A reminder that there's a New England Daily Kos Meetup happening on Saturday, April 14 starting at noon. The place: The The Snow Squall Restaurant at 18 Ocean Street in South Portland, Maine. To RSVP or get more info, email our chief organizing Kossack, nhox42, at nhox42[at]gmail.com. Please note that pet grizzlies are welcome, as the restaurant is a certified Betsy DeVos-free zone.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the midterm elections on Nov. 6: 239
Days 'til the Treefort Music Fest in Boise, ID: 9
Start date of Paul Manafort’s trial in Virginia: 7/10/18
Number of ankle bracelets Manafort has to wear now, one for the feds and one for Virginia: 2
Amount Maine’s hospitality industry made last year, a record: $3.8 billion
Drop in Smith & Wesson gun sales since Trump was elected: 67%
Percent of the GOP tax cuts American companies are allocating to stock buybacks and worker salary/benefits, respectively, according to AP: 40%, 13%
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Dreaming of March 29…
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CHEERS to disarray in the ranks. The special election in Pennsylvania’s 18th congressional district is tomorrow, and the polling is---but shouldn’t be, because Trump won there by 597 percent in 2016---tight as a tick between ex-Marine and former prosecutor Conor Lamb (D) and Rick Saccone (R). In a last-ditch effort to salvage Saccone’s campaign, Trump flew in Saturday night to spend over an hour talking about himself. But the way things have taken shape on the ground, this is looking more and more like a Democratic upset in the making. Exhibit A:
Saccone [is] struggling with the basics of modern-day politics. …Get-out-the-vote operations are the lifeblood of most successful campaigns. But Saccone's has drawn little energy from within, so he is relying on paid contractors and the national GOP, which has scrambled to pick up the slack.
Gee, I wonder what works better: actual neighbors talking to their neighbors about a candidate they’re excited about, or hung-over paid shills who don’t give a shit reading from a script? But hold on, it gets worse:
[T]he National Republican Congressional Committee quietly dispatched a staffer to the district to walk Saccone, who lacked any donor infrastructure, through the basics of how to fundraise. […] Saccone was nearly universally panned as a deeply underwhelming candidate who leaned excessively on the national party to execute a massive, multimillion-dollar rescue effort.
It’s a classic battle of hope, intelligence and common sense versus anger, fear and bullshit. May the best Marine Captain win.
JEERS to where we are. Turning the clocks ahead caused mass confusion across the land, so here’s a quick refresher on where things stand with our dumb baby president as the new week unfolds:
>> Our game of footsies with the last “Axis of Evil” regime is still on. Switzerland is being bandied about as a location for the Great Whackadoo Summit between Lord Dampnut and Little Rocket Man. Saturday night Trump cultists booed when he mentioned Kim Jong Un’s name during a rally in Pennsylvania. But moments after he told them to instead think fondly of the North Korean leader, they started fighting over who would get to host him for Easter dinner at their house. Trumpbot, thy name is gullible.
>> Thanks to idiot lawyer Michael Cohen and Sarah “Loose Lips” H’yuckabee-Sanders, Trump is facing penalties for a panoply of potential election-law crimes as a result of trying to silence a sex partner he did the nasties with while he was married. Meanwhile, 60 Minutes has an interview with porn star (and savvy entrepreneur and American patriot) Stormy Daniels locked and loaded. To coin a phrase: Tick tick tick tick tick tick….
>> Trump’s big military parade is still on, but his demand for tanks was denied because they’ll tear up the streets. He got so mad that, in a fit of rage, he made Mike Pence throw a chair across the room.
>> Nobody knows what the fuck is going on with the steel tariffs.
>> He still wants to enact a rating system for video games to avoid gun massacres, one totally different from the current rating system except exactly the same. (It makes sense if you spend several years huffing tanning fluid.)
>> The Mueller investigation continues, now with a new ally: Sam Nunberg. The Trump adviser, who recently got drunk and went on every cable network to say he was defying Mueller’s request for emails, appeared before a grand jury and now says the Russia conspiracy investigation is totally legit and not a “witch hunt.” Good to know!
On POTUS’s plate for this week: gaslighting, insults and incompetence. Because why mess with tradition just because we turned our clocks ahead?
CHEERS to the human robot who's just the right height. Happy 71st Birthday to 6-foot 2-inch Mitt Romney. The former governor of Liberalchusetts and likely future senator from Conservatah will no doubt find himself on the receiving end of a bunch of moocher-worthy big gifts and chocolate baked goodies. If he's been really good, he'll get a new deluxe Etch-A-Sketch with which to re-create his dream of abolishing Obamacare (on Day One!), bombing Iran, trucking the "illegals" who haven't already "self-deported" back to Mexico (the Canadian illegals can stay), crushing unions, reinstating "Don’t Ask, Don't Tell," getting rid of Planned Parenthood, privatizing Social Security and opening the National Mall for oil drilling. Heck, Barack Obama may even ring him up, now that he’s finished with his second term that all the GOP’s horses and all the GOP’s men couldn’t prevent in 2012. Then later his former running mate Paul Ryan will stop by after all the dishes have been washed to re-wash them. And then he might say a few words:
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We got him his usual gift: a tie with the bottom 47 percent lopped off.
CHEERS to BiPM: Delusional Campaign Manager. Exciting news! Over the weekend Senator Elizabeth Warren lit up the equivalent of the Bat Signal:
Sen. Elizabeth Warren says she isn't running for president in 2020.
"I am not running for president in 2020," Warren told CNN's Jim Acosta on Saturday.
"This government is working better and better and better for a thinner and thinner slice at the top. I am in these fights, and I am in this fight to retain my Senate seat in 2018.
That's where I'm focused. That's where I'm going to stay focused. I'm not running for president."
That can only mean one thing: SHE’S RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT!!! Quick---you take care of ordering the bumper stickers and lawn signs, I’ll set up the exploratory committee. Mrs. McGillicutty will set up a rigorous but not too exhausting campaign schedule, Larry Higginbotham has volunteered to start oppo research and update the database, and the Jenkins will make down-payments on campaign headquarters in all 50 states and start the phone-banking operation. Tomorrow: canvassing starts and we’ll need to set up a revolving account with the corner pizza joint. Okay, everybody put your hands together: three…two…one…LET’S GO!!!!
CHEERS to the fearsome fivesome. Sixteen years ago today, after a grueling selection process involving thousands of hues, shades and pigments, five colors were chosen to stand watch over America's shores as official representatives of the federal government's new Homeland Security Advisory System.
During their first two years, Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge changed the alert level ten times, mostly due to the dire threat of Democrats winning elections. Then they stood frozen in time, worthless and unloved (except by Fox News, which ran a chyron on its news ticker that read “Terror Alert: Yellow” several times an hour) until they were disbanded by the Obama administration in April of 2011 in favor of a traditional warning system consisting of loudspeakers installed on the head of Louie Gohmert.
True fact: Orange has had quite a post-alert-system career. It went on to become a traffic cone on the George Washington Bridge, and was instrumental in blowing the whistle on Chris Christie’s “Bridgegate” plot. And today it serves as the official Pantone template for the president’s face, and is on the cusp of replacing John Kelly as chief of staff. (Oops, I’ve said too much.)
CHEERS and JEERS to Daylight Saving Time. Lovin' it because it's still light out at 6 o'clock! Hatin' it because now that it's dark at wake-up time again, I get paranoid about oversleeping, so this has become my post-DST sleep cycle:
Zzzzzz...[Jolt awake, check the time]...Zzzzzz…[Jolt awake, check the time]… Zzzzzz…[Jolt awake, check the time]… Zzzzzz…[Jolt awake, check the time]… Zzzzzz…[Jolt awake, check the time]…
It's like being a reporter at a Sarah Huckabee Sanders press briefing.
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Ten years ago in C&J: March 12, 2008
CHEERS to bittersweet victories. Andre Carson beat his Republican challenger by 11 points Tuesday, so he's headed to Congress to finish his late grandmother Julia Carson's term representing Indiana's 7th District:
"We did it! We did it! Thank God we did it," he said, each line punctuated by a roar from the crowd that packed the hotel ballroom. He wished, he said, his grandmother [Rep. Julia Carson], who died of cancer Dec. 15, was there to see this moment.
Someone shouted back: "She is here!"
So apparently next Tuesday there will be another special election. And may we say, a very awkward one.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to America’s favorite dancing Grandma. You may remember when 106-year-old Virginia McLaurin, a retired seamstress and school volunteer, spent a moment boogying with the Obamas at the White House a few years back. She’s wheelchair-bound now, but still has the rhythm in her, as she demonstrated last week when she met the Harlem Globetrotters for an early birthday party. I hope I have this much spunk in 2073…
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Today is Virginia’s 109th birthday. She was born twelve years before women could vote, thus giving these words of hers all the weight of a two-ton voting booth: "Please go vote. Go vote. If you don’t do anything else. If you have to crawl, go to the poll, then vote." Got that? Good. Because she’ll be taking names in November.
Have a tolerable Monday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Cheers and Jeers study confirms Bill in Portland Maine’s DNA actually changed in kiddie pool
---Newsweek
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